Preempting No Taxation without Representation: The Case of Taxing Private Homeownership in China, 2003-2011

• In Event: 4322 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Political Sociology of China

Abstract

Supposedly, non-democratic states are expected to make extraction as indirect and non-intrusive as possible, because direct and intrusive forms of extraction are likely to trigger resistance, bargaining, and other destabilizing and potentially democratizing pressures. In the rare instances when a non-democratic state did move towards direct and intrusive forms of extraction, what political forces drove such a move and how did the state try to minimize political repercussions and resistance? These questions are addressed through a case study of how the Chinese state ended up enacting a tax on private homeownership - a highly direct and intrusive tax - in Shanghai and Chongqing in 2011. This paper shows that the move towards taxing private homeownership resulted from contingent processes in which different state actors strategically interacted, struggled and competed. More importantly, direct extraction is likely to trigger resistance and bargaining only when societal actors already think of themselves as political subjects sensitized to the state (i.e. as citizens able to make claims). This paper argues that a subtle and pervasive source of non-democratic states’ power lies exactly in its capacity to shape societal actors into alternative modes of political or apolitical subjects. The Chinese state used two such strategies to minimize taxpayers’ resistance associated with taxing private homeownership: Chongqing’s municipal government used the strategy of mobilization, to mold societal actors into a particular mode of political subjects by mobilizing them into active participation in politics; Shanghai’s municipal government used the strategy of demobilization, to mold societal actors into apolitical subjects by disengaging them from participation in politics. These claims help us rethink the nature of the non-democratic state.

Author

• Yueran Zhang, Harvard University